Category: Art

These past few days I’ve been toying with various video editing tools for a project I have in mind, and today I came across one potential template I simply could not ignore. So I decided to practice a bit.

The original video is this one that shows relatively famous Jessica Yaniv punching some dude as he asked him a question at exit of a courthouse (why are they there? I don’t know, but I bet it involves testicles somehow.)

J. Yaniv just punched me in the back of the head. Just spoke to police. Luckily there are two security cameras directly overhead at the courthouse. I need an advil. pic.twitter.com/3hfm2CfYhq

I don’t know much about the characters involved here, although I recognize Yaniv for the “Wax my balls” thing some time ago.

The original video is OK, and has the virtue of being real and all that, but I thought it could be improved nonetheless. So here it is:

Keep in mind that this is highly esoteric humor. If you don’t know what the infamous game Postal 2 is or some of the details surrounding Yaniv, the edited interaction may seem even more puzzling than the original one. But since a lot of weirdos follow me, I assume the odds of some of you getting it are quite good.

Looking at the Amazon best sellers is always a good way to waste spend the time, and it proves that thing about everything having to change for everything to stay the same. If you blink even for a moment, books, authors, or even entire new genres that once seemed ready to become the new hot thing are suddenly gone, yet, at the same time, the new thing looks surprisingly similar to what they replaced.

You would be hard-pressed to find a more strightforward example of creative unoriginality and lack of imagination than today’s book covers, although the same could be said concerning their titles and perhaps even their themes and style of writing. But covers are easier to analyze—and funnier.

Reading this piece by Jon Del Arroz about alleged anti-male bias in SF&F made me think about two events of my life which bear on this issue. Jon’s point –and the numbers he presents seem to support his claim– is that there is an anti-male bias in some parts of the short story market (and probably also in others.) I think that’s plausible, and there are some obvious examples like Tor.com or Uncanny. However, the problem goes deeper than that, and the alleged anti-maleness may be just an unfortunate consequence of an even more indelible bias than merely avoiding stories by testosterone-poisoned individuals. Let me tell you about two things that happened when I was young, so you get an idea of what I’m talking about.

While these media will routinely show faces of women in other cases, there seems to be no pushback that the Jenin committee is clearly so Islamist that they consider the depiction of women to be forbidden.

The high percentage of Palestinians who support fundamentalist interpretations of Islam is a very under-reported story. The last Pew poll on the topic showed that 89% of Palestinians support Sharia being the law of the land.

Because the word “pulp” references the material on which those stories were published (compared to the “slicks,” for example) and not any specific genre or style (beyond the fact that all the stories attempted to be exciting -not a minor trait-) it is sometimes difficult to write about them without misrepresenting the whole phenomenon of the pulps, which was huge and encompassed at least three generations of authors. There is also the problem that most of the writers died many decades before our current literary and cultural controversies (or died too young,) or left the field once they could start writing in more prestigious circles.

b) Ask for the same croissant, and explain to her why you like them so much, perhaps illustrating the point with a humorous or beautiful short story about your croissant-filled past. It’s a small town (but with big sewers!), though, so people don’t mind a bit of small talk.

c) Ask for the croissant, and then go rambling for half an hour about its origins during the Siege of Vienna, and about all the European kings who have ever suffered from lactose intolerance.

Two months ago I reviewed the first issue of Cirsova. For those who don’t know about it, Cirsova is a magazine that specializes in fantasy inspired by the golden era of fantasy and science fiction (the distinction was blurry sometimes.) It also looks back to the pulps and tries to regain that spirit of weirdness and wonder that eludes contemporary fiction. The second issue is already here, and I can tell one thing right away: This second issue is even better.

I really liked the first issue, but I thought it still could be improved. It had a great variety of stories, though, so all kinds of readers could find something for them.

On the other hand, while I quickly realized which ones were my favorites stories, I can’t say the same about this second issue. But not because they aren’t any good, but because not only have the best one got better, the “average” has also improved.